


Misscommunication Caused By The 1950s

by PenzyRome



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: 1950s Slang, A lot of references to West Side Story, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Kiss, Fluff, Inspired by some stuff on Tumblr ill explain in the notes, M/M, Pining, Prom, These tags are.... really cute wow, javid and have i mentioned pining bc there's a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 04:15:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12762945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenzyRome/pseuds/PenzyRome
Summary: Jack's always expected to dance with someone at prom, and David's always expected to end up at the punch bowl.Their expectations end up true, just not exactly the way they'd thought.





	Misscommunication Caused By The 1950s

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, background time: so you know that one tumblr post that talks about the dual meaning of "Come on snake, let's rattle'? Well @illtake20newspapersplease (on tumblr, go follow them) said that it totally screamed Javid, which it did, and @itsnewstome on tumblr (go read their fics people theyre so good (Ididn'tsignupforthisshit (Oliver_Ravenwood) on here!)) egged me on so here you go!

     Listen, David always expected to be sitting near the punch bowl on prom night. Did he expect to be sitting at the punch bowl because his friend was trying to find someone to dance with him, and had said that he was “hottest when you’re drinking shit, so try that and grab a cup before someone spikes it”? No. But having a goal was better than not having one, so there he was. By the punch bowl. Drinking very possibly the last un-spiked cup of punch.

     Les would have had a field day if he’d found out.

     “Did Crutchie ditch you to talk to Kath and Sarah?” Jack said, sliding into the seat next to him. David wrinkled his nose.

     “He’s probably talking to Sarah about what she thinks my type is.”

     Jack rolled his eyes. “I don’t understand that shit. Like, can’t people just be pretty and leave it at that? Shouldn’t willingness to date a person be based off their personality? Also, is Crutchie trying to hook you up? Impressive.”

     “Why is that impressive?”

     “All the girls at this school are either queer or really mean. Like, vicious. Scary. The type to rip your eyes out with nicely manicured nails and stomp on you with their heels.”

     “You seem to think about that a lot,” David said, taking a sip of his punch and looking thoughtful. “And besides, Crutchie’s looking for a guy. He says I need to broaden my worldview, and that acknowledging the plethora of guys who are,” he made airquotes, “‘Ready to date an attractive young man’ is part of that.”

     “Yeah.. Wait.” Jack turned his head so fast David could hear his neck crack. “Guy?”

     David raised one eyebrow. “Yes?”

     “Since when?”

     “Jack, I dated Race for like… a year. You saw us making out. Why is this a surprise?”

     Jack made a grumbly sound that seemed to convey a general feeling of “I don’t know.” “You just seemed… I dunno. I guess, yeah, you seem gay. Or bi? Or pan? Queer. Y’know.”

     “Wow. Assertive.”

     “I just… Y’know… You never _talked_ about it.” When Jack thought about it more, he probably had. “Not _seriously_.” He waved his hand for a while, muttering half-sentences. “Y’know.”

     David half-laughed into his punch, and downed the last of it before standing up to throw the cup away. Jack jumped up too, and started wringing his hands. “So bi? Pan? Gay?”

     Davey shrugged. “All I know is boys are cute, and kissing them is very nice. Figuring it out’s what college is for.”

     “Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Coolcoolcool.” Jack had become increasingly aware of the sweat dripping down his neck and his heart running at the same beat as some late 2000’s song David would know the name to. And the lyrics to. And how to play a piano cover of it.

     “How’s West Side Story?” See, Race was wrong, Jack possessed the ability to hold a conversation that involved someone else’s interests.

     David smiled, the corners of his eyes wrinkling up. “It’s incredible. Sort of a dream show, really, Medda always picks the greatest plays. We’re having to go overtime, though, she wants the background lines really authentic, and the background Jets and Sharks keep saying everything’s lit, so she’s making us study 1950’s slang.”

     “ _Really_.”

     “Mhm. And I’m doing stuff for Elmer, since he’s had to babysit a lot. It’s really fascinating, though. I’ve managed to find all these books on the use of slang and its cultural impact, and on prejudice affecting the way that people are viewed from the moment they start talking, and on the development of English as a growing language, and it’s really just… incredible. I’ve learned things that aren’t even applicable, but still fun to know.” He glanced over as he threw the cup in one of the garbage bags the teachers had stapled to the walls. “Am I boring you?”

     “Dave, you could talk about the mitochondria for twenty minutes and I’d be listening the entire time.”

     “Oh.” David looked down for a second, his face getting warm. “Well. Thank you.”

     Jack knocked their shoulders together, and they walked along the side of the dance floor for a while in silence. Off in the distance, someone who sounded strangely like Spot started singing Toxic, the words slurred together in a drunk mumble. Crutchie started having a swear-off with Race, so David was reasonably sure that he had escaped his matchmaking escapades for a few minutes.

     Crutchie swore like a 50-year-old sailor. It was terrifying.

     “So,” David said, looking thoughtful, “is Medda taking any stress out at home? Race almost had a breakdown, she was grilling him so hard about the sound.”

     Jack shrugged. “Not really. She keeps work and home separate, except for making me read all sorts of stuff about the 50’s.” He tilted his head in David’s direction. “Some of the phrase stuff.”

     “Really?” David’s eyes lit up. “Are you interested by it? I have some notes that you can look over, but the handwriting may be a little messy, I need a new prescription.” When he mentioned it, he shoved his glasses up towards his face, smiling with a little embarrassed blush.

     Jack grinned. “I’m having some fun with it, mainly cause of the weirdass shit that people said. Bashing ears meaning talking a lot, stuff like that.”

     David wrinkled his nose. “Sarah had a fit with that one. She wouldn’t stop using it. It was absurd. I think Ma was ready to break a vase.”

     “I still say bogus, is that weird?”

     “Nah, Les sounds like he was born forty years ago, and Sarah sounds like Jane Austen.”

     Jack laughed, bumping their shoulders together. “So what else? Tech week’s coming up, right?”

     David sighed so loudly his breath ruffled Jack’s hair. “I’ve been trying to forget. Fucking _Buttons_ ,” he said their friend’s name like he said “bullshit,” A.K.A. spat out like it tasted bad, “has been on my ass for three weeks about my costumes and the fact that I got an inch taller since fittings, so she needs to rehem my pants, and Medda’s trying to make me not get a haircut so that the mic clips on easier, and I think Race had a breakdown about Spot not having long enough fucking arms to reach all the lights. And Jojo had a goddamn stroke about the soundboard, I swear, she ate like five bags of Nacho Cheese Doritos and said she felt like she’d smoked three pounds of weed. It was terrifying.”

     “So,” Jack said, pointing at David, “you’re saying I’m going to need to come over with lactose-and-gluten-free mac and cheese for you between acts?”

     David just sort of… stared at him. It was perplexing.

     “Um, Dave? You okay?”

     David’s voice sounded soft and strained at the same time. “Where would I be without you?”

     Well, let’s get something straight. Jack Kelly wasn’t always the best with words. That was David’s job. Jack expressed things through pictures and actions-- he _showed_ what he was feeling. But goddamn, when David Jacobs looked at him like that, it was like words didn’t even exist.

     So of course he went for his normal reaction when David put him at a loss for words: saying some stupid shit that would _absolutely_ end badly.

     “Well,” he cleared his throat uncomfortably and held out his hand, “come on, snake, let’s rattle.”

     In his defense, he thought he was being totally smooth. But David just looked horrified.

     “I don’t want to fight you!”

     “ _What_?”

     “What!”

     Jack frowned, his eyebrows furrowed. “What do _you_ think it means?”

     “Essentially, let’s fight!”

     Um.

     They both paused. “I’ll google it,” David muttered, and pulled out his phone. After a moment, he said, “So, it has two meanings. Asking someone to fight, and, uh, asking someone to dance.” He looked up from his phone, bright red, and asked slowly, “Maybe you meant the second?”

     “I sorta… I, um, well, yeah.” He still hadn’t put his hand down. Goddammit. “Do you want to?”

     David didn’t even move for maybe five seconds. Jack was starting to think he messed up before David just started nodding so fast it was almost a blur.

 

     Listen, Jack Kelly always expected to be dancing with someone at the prom. He’d never had a problem with romantic stuff-- he’d always had a date to every dance, always been at the top of everyone’s lists. But dancing with David Jacobs was like staring at a supernova.

     “Hey, Jack?”

     “Yeah?”

     David looked to the side for a moment. “This is a, a not-platonic thing, right? Like, this isn’t ‘look at those boys, such good friends,’ stuff like that?”

     Jack almost laughed. “I’d hope not.”

     “Oh. Well, um, good. Very good.” David nodded for a moment. He was so _tall_ , who the hell allowed it, and he was gorgeous, and Jack wanted to kiss him, and…

     Wow. He was kissing David Jacobs. David Jacobs was kissing him. He was on his tiptoes to be remotely close to his height, and David was leaning down, and why had they not done this for years and years, because _wow_.

     David pulled back for a second, and Jack let him breathe for a moment before he pulled him down again.

     He could have kissed David Jacobs for an eternity.

     David seemed to have the same train of thought and pulled Jack away from the dancing into the one corner where there wasn’t several of their drunk friends yelling.

     Jack wasn’t sure exactly how much of an eternity he’d spent kissing David before Crutchie found them.

     “Hey, Davey, I think I fou--” He stopped abruptly. “Woah. Um, this is a thing now? That’s good.”

     David stared straight at Crutchie. “Crutchie Morris, I swear to all that is good, if you don’t leave right this instant I will… Fuck up something.”

     Crutchie was a very, very smart person. He turned without saying anything, yelled for Race, and was gone in seconds.

     Jack turned back to David. “So, how long have you--”

     “Shut up,” David muttered, no heat behind it.

     Jack mimed zipping his lips, and David laughed before he kissed him again.

 

     Eternity, that time, lasted until they were all kicked out because prom itself was over.

     David retied his tie and checked his reflection in the mirror of Sarah’s car. “You want to come over tonight? Ma’s made clam chowder, there’ll be leftovers. And we can talk. About stuff.”

     “Sounds great.” Katherine and Sarah walked up to them, Sarah pulling out her keys as she patted David on the shoulder.

     “You two have a good time over in the corner?” Katherine asked, raising one eyebrow at David, who made an accusatory noise.

     “How did you--” Jack started to ask, and Sarah held up a hand to stop him.

     “Jack, you have three visible hickies, you can’t fucking back out of this. By the way, David, Ma said that she trusts your judgement, as an,” she made airquotes, “‘intelligent young man’ but she does hope that you--”

     David plugged his ears. “I can’t fucking hear you over how much of an embarrassment you are!’

     Sarah blew the two a kiss through her open car window. “Love you, boys!”

     Both siblings flipped each other off as Sarah drove away. Jack leaned into David’s side, and the stood together in the cool spring air for a while before David muttered, “She was my ride.”

     Jack turned his head to look at him, and they looked at each other for a moment before they both started laughing. As usual, Jack was aware of little details: David’s fingers intertwined with his, his eyelashes clumped together as his eyes squeezed shut, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

     Eventually, their laughter died down, and Jack clutched his hand even harder. “I’ll call an Uber.”

     “Good idea.”

     Jack turned his phone back on, (he vaguely remembered shutting it off when it rang in the middle of Makeout Session #2) and opened up the app while David hummed quietly to some song that he knew everything about, and that no one else could remember the name of.

     David caught him looking while nearby drivers loaded, and he smiled, scrunching his nose up. Jack’s heart almost ached, he felt so many too-sappy feelings at the same time.

_I could be with you for an eternity._

**Author's Note:**

> So originally, this was 1950s AU but I didn't love it, so I rewrote it like this and liked it a lot more. And jsyk, Medda runs a local teens theater that puts on shows produced by people 13-18. It used to be adult theater, but she saw how bad the school's program was and wanted something for the Theatre Kids TM to do! (I love Medda so much y'all,,,,)  
> Also, let's play Guess Who David Plays In WSS  
> Also, my tumblr is @penzyroamin for my main and @dreamsanddaylilies for my original content/personal. (Talk to me I'm nice I swear)  
> So yeah! I really hope you enjoyed! (Also, if anyone wants me to write more of this AU, PLEASE tell me because I have ideas...)


End file.
